It’s no secret that sometimes the smallest gestures can have the biggest impact. It’s important to relay to your clients, and even your partners, that they matter. Because they do. Your business wouldn’t exist without them. The simplest way to show them that you care, is to send them a thank you note. For the last year, I’ve been using using a service called Paperless Post.

It’s an online service that helps you create and send beautiful thank you cards, flyers and more, without having to print or physically mail them, saving on both time and gas. My favourites are often the ones designed by Rifle Paper Co. They are so, so pretty!

Paperless Post cards are an easy way to ask for feedback from your clients (I love when I receive their testimonials!!) while sending them a genuine note straight to their inbox. You’re able to track when they’ve viewed it or send it to multiple recipients.

What do you say to a company or individual that wants you to provide a service, talent or product to them for free?

We artists, freelancers and creative professionals get this all the time. And I mean ALL the time. Dox work for free, for exposure, or for your portfolio.

My number one advice is:

No matter how new you are to the industry, if a business or individual will profit from your work, you should always be compensated. Basically, if you know they are using your product, service or talent to market themselves, their store, their business - you should get compensated. They are using you so they can make money, doesn't it make sense that you should get paid too?

Of course, there are exceptions to this such as:

1) Bartering for a good/service

If someone approaches you, particularly a friend or a family that wants you to help them out for a project, you can suggest a trade. I do this all the time with my closest friends. For example, my girl Sabrina Jade Designs - if she needs photos of her kickass clothing line, she'll offer to alter my clothes for free or custom design me a new outfit. It doesn't necessarily have to be of equal value, but it helps to put the trade in perspective, especially when it comes to how much time it will take both of you.

2) Helping out a local non-profit/charity

If you want to build good karma, network, build a portfolio or add to your resume, there are many non-profits that would appreciate free help. It doesn't hurt to ask them if they have a budget, as there are many larger non-profits that do have the funds to be able to compensate you, but the little ones often don't. If you have the time and want to help for free, do it. Heck, I do it as part of my business model, always with boundaries though. Don't say yes to doing something for free if you're already busy or you really don't want to. Remember, clients, paid work, and your mental health, should always come first.

Unless you have a child.

Then your child should come first.

And that work is always unpaid. Sanity is not guaranteed.

Anyway. There are many people who may disagree with me, and many who do agree (like this article on Huffington Post), but I have been working and getting paid as an artist for over 15 years because I believe it is right. My time has value. It may not have started out as much in the beginning, but growth starts with your first paid job.

As creative professionals, we often are expected to do work or create art for free, which adds to the culture that our talent, skills and time aren't as important as others. If we don't value what we do, then others won't either. If we continue to say yes to working for free, then we add to that culture.

But remember, we are professionals. We want to earn a living from our vocation. We do great work and our work is worth the investment.

I have been a mentor for youth (and even adults) on the subject of Entrepreneurship for a few years now in Ottawa. It first began in 2014 through a program called Start It Up which was at PQCHC. It was actually because of this program (which is no longer around) that was the catalyst for starting my non-profit A.R.T. In Action. But more on that another time.

After Start It Up came Launch! and then Hope Ventures at Bethany Hope Centre. Now I am part of a database on YENGO (Youth Entrepreneurship Networking Group of Ottawa), with organizations committed to teaching youth on Entrepreneurship. Recently I received a request from the coordinator of the Arts program at Ottawa Innercity Ministries to develop a one day workshop on Entrepreneurship for next April 2017. Through these programs, I come in and share my knowledge, advice and insight with others who want to start their own business.

My goal when sharing information on this subject that I eat, breathe and sleep is to make sure I share the good, the bad and for real, the ugly. I am now in my second year mentoring the Launch! program at PQCHC and I realized that because of my background in many, many industries (more to come on that later because I tried practically everything) and through my personal challenges and experiences (being on your own since 14 can teach you some things), I realized I have a lot of information in which I could share. And I should be sharing it! In the same enthusiastic way that I share reducing waste and zero waste knowledge!

So this is exactly why I'm here now, to share what I've learned in 3 years of business and 8 years of freelancing and well... 16 years of hustling (needing to make money at 14 to pay rent taught me how to hustle). Since there is a lot to cover, I have broken it down into small parts that I will share over the year.

So if you can make it through these 3 lessons and still want to continue on in Entrepreneurship, I'm here to support you.

Let the lessons begin.

Lesson #1: Know your purpose

This is where it all starts. Who are you? What kind of person do you see yourself being? What do you want your legacy to be? What do you want for your life? Most people start with: I want to be rich or I want to be famous. But what kind of message do you want to leave behind when you're gone? For me, it was important that I lead a life of value that is based on love and helping others. It meant that my business NEEDS to help others.

And not just in the way of service and product deliverables, it meant that to me it is important that when I am laying on my death bed, I know that I did EVERY THING I could to give back. Long before the term social enterprise was coined, I was already donating the sales of my art work to charities and non-profits because I wanted to use my gifts and my services to benefit the lives of others as well. Yes, I get paid. Yes my goal is to earn income, but I wanted to make sure someone else could be rewarded too. That is the very foundation of my business.

Think about what you want your business to be about. What is your purpose?

Lesson #2: How much do you need to live?

Most people spend and spend and see bills and get frustrated. They know they want money. Some think a bigger house will make them happier. A fatter bank account will mean they can finally buy the things that they want. But they hardly break it down to the core of what most people ACTUALLY want, which at the essence is simple: A comfortable life with the basic necessities and the time to spend with people they love. According to this article, we in the western world ARE the richest people on Earth.

This realization invites us to pursue happiness elsewhere. If I already exist in the top 2% of wage-earners in the world, is reaching the top 1.8% really going to increase my happiness index significantly? Maybe having more money is not the answer, maybe I will need to look elsewhere. -

I was taught that what you need to live is your "Life line." This is your minimum that you need to survive. It is your rent, your car insurance, your gas, your groceries, your cell phone bill. If you know what you pay every month, you know what you need to survive. If you can sacrifice purchasing your daily coffee, you can start to use that money and begin to save. The problem is most people don't take the time to think this through. They want money and they want it now. Almost all wealth is acquired through time. Take your time, know your bottom line. Work towards it.

Lesson #3: Know yourself

This may sound like the first lesson, but it's not. Entrepreneurship takes a certain kind of individual. It takes a lot out of you mentally as a person, like this article discusses. It's considered risky. You have no one to own up to but yourself. It's 6AM and I'm up before my four year old for once. I'm up because I needed to get work done. Is there someone breathing down my neck and asking me if I did the work I need to do? No. It's all me. Do I consider it worth it? Yes, absolutely! I make my own schedule, plan my own holidays and work from bed sometimes!

When you get into this type of self-employment, of freelancing or being your own boss, you need to ask yourself some serious questions, such as:

Are you the type of person that needs direction? If you're serious about Entrepreneurship but can't think for yourself, find a group of like-minded people that you can bounce ideas off and share your struggles with, so that you can feel motivated and find your own direction.

Are you the type of person that can spend countless hours alone? Listen, Entrepreneurship takes a lot of time. You have to make sacrifices. My son goes to bed and I'm on the grind as soon as he's snoring. I'm not out having drinks at the bar with my friends. (Most of my friends are Mom's anyway). I'm not sitting on the couch watching T.V. (I don't have a T.V.), and I'm not wasting my time just thinking about an idea, I'm actually trying to make it happen.

Before you can start working for yourself, you need to make sure you really enjoy your own presence, because the hours you will put into your company, refining it, planning it, testing it - are not hours spent with others.

Ask yourself, are you the type of person that thinks they need a steady income? Can you wake up and work 8 hours for someone else and be happy getting a pay check? If you're happy with that, don't do Entrepreneurship, but if something in your soul is calling out to you and you feel unhappy, test out the waters. Keep your job but start a side business. As we talked about in Lesson #2, once you know your "Life Line," you'll have a clearer understanding of what you need. According to this article, money contributes to very little of our overall happiness. If that's the case, meet your bottom line (whether that's part-time work and part-time business) and focus your efforts on Lesson #1: the type of person you want to be, the message you want to send out to the world and the legacy you want to leave behind.

Get to know yourself and find out what works best for you. Your compass and how to know if you're on the right path? The amount of happiness that comes out of you and reflects back into your life.

It has been a busy start of the year working on various projects, including helping with the development of YENGO (Youth Entrepreneurship Networking Group of Ottawa). Working beside the Project Coordinator, Brandi Chaffey, we took photographs, created a video, designed their logo as well as a website, which we called version 1.0.

But like all projects in the works, obstacles can happen and we later discovered that the website host couldn't handle the requirements that YENGO needed to meet, which was a referrals tool and database.

So, YENGO, with the help of the amazing CAPRA DESIGN, created the latest website now, which is easy to navigate with it's clean and simple design. It's AMAZING! And we are happy to announce it is now live!

While the funding for YENGO has ended, the steering committee and all YENGO members (including us) are still working to continue to expand YENGO and it's database so that the resources continue to be updated and youth can find the help they need.

What is incredible about this site is youth and service providers can now go to one website and search based on age range, what you're seeking help with and more. It's super easy to navigate.

To find out a little bit more about YENGO, check out the video we produced below: